


a nearly peaceful place

by behzaintfunny



Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Battle, Blood and Injury, But only briefly mentioned!, Emotional Baggage, No Romance, Other, POV First Person, Past Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:23:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23172382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/behzaintfunny/pseuds/behzaintfunny
Summary: Jamie and Black Jack Randall, as they share their last ghastly dance on the brink of life and death, in the bloodied Culloden Moor.
Relationships: Jamie Fraser/Jonathan "Black Jack" Randall
Comments: 8
Kudos: 35





	a nearly peaceful place

**Author's Note:**

> Small FYI: I have never written a first person POV fic, nor do I read those. Still, this was never going to not be first person.

I am not entirely surprised to see him before me on the wretched Culloden Moor battlefield; in truth, I hadn't expected otherwise. After all, he had to see for himself whether the prophecy proved true - whether this were indeed his last day alive.

Still, the very sight of him makes my insides set ablaze with a deep rooted hatred, one that had never diminished with time.

He stands before me shamelessly, a sword in hand, his perfectly tied hair unkempt amidst the chaos of battle. He has blood on his hands, much like myself. My heart thumps inside my chest, and the blood in my veins is all I can hear.

I wipe my palms on top of my kilt absentmindedly as his gaze meets mine. For a lone, terrifying moment, the world is silent around us. He looks at me then as though he wants to devour me whole. My hand trembles where it holds my dirk.

Our fates may be joined, but I swear this was going to be the last I see of him. I raise my blade high in the air, almost daringly, watching the grin as it paints his face.

I seize him head on, for I am not scared of him any longer.

We run towards each other through all kinds of chaos and horror, dead bodies and defiantly alive soldiers fighting against us. I pierce a redcoat just as he guts one of my men, and our eyes stay connected all throughout. I watch him lick his lips in anticipation.

I charge towards him, finally, and he reads me like a book. Our blades clash in the air, the metallic sound like pure music to my ears. I grit my teeth and use all of my strength to push at his sword, but he does not relent. He stands his feet strongly and confidently, as I watch a similar grimace appear on his face that I know he can watch paint mine.

I take a step back, and thrust my dirk towards him, almost blindly, almost instinctively. It feels like well-rehearsed routine; truly, it differed naught from what we usually did to each other.

Pain, in its essence, is always pain, regardless of how you inflict it. It was a lesson I had learned the hard way.

When my sword finally pierces his leg, it feels like true ecstasy; like the very gates of heaven have opened before me. His body contorts where it is hurting most grievously, as he grips helplessly at the opening of the wound. My sword is yet to leave the low of his thigh. His fingers caress my blade with something akin to reverence, and it sends shivers down my spine.

I pull the sword out only to stab at him again, and again, and again. I am a maniac, and so is he. We have both succumbed to a similar sort of madness, the one where no morals or boundaries exist.

He is my predator, and I am his.

I am his prey, and he is mine.

His sword pierces my back open with practised ease, as I feel the old scars rejuvenate to life. They are the very same ones he has left all those years ago, and he revels in being able to deepen them, to ruin them, to hurt me.

"Tell me, Jamie, how does it feel?" he groans, walking even closer to me, even when his leg is bleeding out underneath him.

I release myself from his sword's embrace. I charge at him with all of the strength I still do posess, knocking him off his feet and onto the bloodied moor.

"You'd know, wouldn't ye?"

I ask, but I don't expect an answer.

When he pulls me down to the ground by my legs, I accept the mud's cold touch almost eagerly. I had expected it; truly, I would have been shocked and disappointed to see my monster surrender so easily before my very feet.

I give him a fight; he gives me war.

People scream and die all around us, but we pay them no mind. When my dirk pierces his shin, he grins like a madman.

Perhaps we have both gone insane, if there even is a place for sanity in war and hate.

"Come on, you can do better than this." he taunts me, his eyes piercing at my skin. I try to look away but he pulls me closer, punches at the side of my face weakly, "Isn't this what you've been waiting for all your life? Do I not deserve the full extent of your wrath?"

His sword pierces the side of my torso with twice the fervour he had earlier shown me. I scream, for it feels in that moment as though my whole body has been set on fire.

He smiles, and it deems me silent. I tell myself, he will not take pleasure from my pain any longer.

Not in this life, not ever again.

Desperately, I mount him, mixing the filth and mud with my blood and his own. He looks at me with wide blown eyes and I revel in still being able to best him.

My knuckles kiss the bottom of his jaw with the same strength I thrusted the sword into his body with. My whole arm tingles with it; I do it again, and again. He has a sick grin on his face all throughout, and I pray that the Lord help me make it go away for good.

His lip is busted open and bloody red, the same as the colour of his coat. I look him in the eyes, and seize him with hate.

"D'ye truly ken how long I have waited for this moment? How long I have longed to see you take your last dying breath?" I tell him, and my throat feels coarse with how loudly I yell at him, surrounded by all hell set loose, "Och, how I wanted to be the one to do it..."

He grins at me, choking on waves of his own blood. He looks less and less like himself, and more like my monster, the one that haunted my dreams throughout all the good and the evil.

_Ye willna haunt me any longer, Randall._

"Surely, you don't think me that easy to kill." he taunts, throwing me off his body with rejuvenated strength, "This isn't the end, Jamie. This is just the beginning."

I fall to the ground before him, the wounds on my back aching greatly as they touch the filthy mud. He stands to his feet before I can prevent him from doing so, forcing one of his boots onto my chest where it hurts the most. My ribs begin to give way underneath his weight. I can see the muscles in his thigh strain when he forces me more and more onto the ground. I squirm, hands roaming the area around me in search of my dirk. He catches me before I can succeed, piercing his sword through one of my hands like on the day he had marked me as his.

His hand rubs away at the blood collecting on his face, his breathing heavy and erratic. I will not give him the pleasure of hearing me beg.

"Is this what ye had always wanted?" I ask him instead, even as his leg takes more and more breath away from me, "When ye first met me in Lallybroch, when ye had me flogged, when ye _raped me_ , did ye imagine we'd ever come to this?"

"Oh, no." he tells me, twisting the blade where it pierces my palm if only to watch me grimace in pain, "This is so much more than I could have ever hoped for, Jamie. It's beautiful."

_Dinna call me that._

I manage to hit him in the back of the knee with one of my legs, aiming for the very same spot I had pierced open earlier. He falls off of me weakly, and I catch my first easy breath like a drowning man at sea. I pull his sword out of my palm desperately before thrusting it at him. He catches it with practised ease, as confusion befalls his face.

"Get up, captain!" I roar at him, watching his face contort in a grimace and a grin alike, "I'm nae done with ye yet!"

I take my dirk in hand, and wait for him to catch his breath. He stands before me debauched, my very own picture of ruin, and stares past the very depths of my soul.

For a moment, we look at each other, and the world seems to have stopped spinning around us. He feels it, and as do I. My chest heaves as I attempt to regain some of my strength. His hand twitches where it is holding the handle of his sword.

"Are you ready to die, Jamie?" he whispers, and his stare pulls at my very heartstrings.

"Ye're mistaken, Jonathan." I tell him, watching the surprise as it paints his face.

I had never called him by his name before, not even in my weakest.

I watch his throat constrict when he gulps away the unease and the exhaustion. He stands tall before me, trying his damnest to ignore the pain in his leg I know is killing him. I can feel it, too, everywhere in my body.

There isn't a place in my body that he hasn't managed to hurt. I delight in getting to say the same for him, now.

"Tis no' me that shall die tonight, but ye."

I point my dirk to his chest, and we resume our dance.

I am not convinced of the truth of my words, but I want desperately to believe them. All I know, all I _truly_ know, is that one of us was not going to survive the night. Perhaps neither of us, if that's what God had planned for us.

More than anything, I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing my heart's worries. I stood before him instead, fearless and bloodied, and all I knew was that I had to be the one to kill him.

He thrusts his blade towards me with something akin to desperation, and I welcome each cut as it pierces my chest. They are not nearly deep enough to kill me, only to cause more immense pain for me to endure.

It had never been in his best interest to kill me. Instead, he liked to toy with me, test all of my limits, so much so that at one point he had managed to make me consider taking my own life.

It gives me strength to know he knows naught of the extent of pain he has caused me. I will never be weak before him again.

I grip at his wrist where he wields his sword, gritting my teeth as I muster the power to push him away. He falls back, hands on his thighs, taking a lone moment to collect his breathing.

"Claire?" he asks, a self-confident smirk on his face even as his chest heaves.

I let a groan escape my lips, my lone hand turning to a fist at my side, "Ye willna hurt her again. _Never_ , ye hear me?!"

When he spits on the moor, it is blood alone that comes out of his mouth. Unphased, he strides towards me.

"Then it will be my face that's the last thing you see before you die. Comforting, don't you think?"

My hand shakes where I hold the handle of my dirk. I breathe away the unease, and inhale the fervour to fight.

He charges at me like a man jumping straight into the arms of fire, a man that has nothing to lose.

I take a step back, forcing my blade towards myself, making him stumble in his step and fall to his knees. I think, this is my chance. He looks at me through lidded eyes that are just as bloodied as the rest of him. The corners of his lips twitch into a smirk.

I feel in my heart an insatiable need to carve that smile off of his face once and for all.

He thrusts his sword towards me before I can act or think, missing my waist by a milimeter. I cut at his arm desperately, watching his face contort in a grimace as a groan travels all the way up his throat.

Even here, on the Culloden moor, where only evil doth dwell, that sound makes my insides churn. I think, I want him to be _silent_.

I want to make him never make a sound again.

His sword pierces through the skin underneath my knee, catching tendons and muscle, causing immense pain to travel all the way up my leg. I fall to my knees before him and bite down harshly on my lip, if only to stop myself from making a sound. It tastes of blood when my tongue touches it weakly, and it hurts like hell, but it's nothing compared to the desperation with which I want to kill him.

In his eyes, I see pure, unadulterated hunger. We are so close I can taste the smell of him in the cold air between us.

I am burning up. I am _dying_.

"Here's your chance, Jamie." he tells me, and I can hear the pain in his voice even as he tries to conceal it. He's never been good at subtlety, contrary to what he likes to believe. "Kill me."

There is an unspoken dare in his voice. I do not need him to say it to understand.

In my gaze, I dare him to do the very same thing.

We are both on our knees now. Together, piece by piece, we deprived ourselves of our dignity. Whoever dies tonight shall not leave this earth with honour.

Honour be damned, I think.

My hand falls to his shoulder weakly. He looks at with almost childish curiosity as it lays there, unmoving. He mimics the gesture and I feel the touch burning the very surface of my skin and so far underneath. I can feel the blood pumping in his veins underneath the layer of clothing where I touch him. I am too exhausted to shake his hand off my arm, no matter how greatly I want to.

"Are ye afraid?" I ask him, quiet as the depths of night, for I cannot hear the noise of battle around me anymore. I think, I have probably grown immune to it.

"Yes." he tells me, his voice low and pained, "Are you?"

_Never._

I stab his side at the same time he stabs me in the back. Our bodies meet in the middle, the shadow of a gasp between us.

I can hear his breathing right next to my ear.

I twist the blade in deeper, causing him to do the same to me. I feel him tremble against me as we bleed each other dry. My knees are cold where they touch the mud.

I watch in the corner of my eye the last of the sun setting. It fills me with unexplainable amounts of sorrow.

I feel him remove the blade from the low of my back. I do the same to him, feeling him chuckle weakly against my hair. He falls, and I fall to the ground next to him, both of us breathing heavily and unmoving.

We paint the ground with our blood in beautiful silence.

There are people fighting around us, suddenly, as though they've materialized from thin air. I think, for a moment, that perhaps me and him were in a dimension of our own, for surely only there could such terrible pain dwell.

I breathe a quiet laugh, and he grunts in confusion.

"And now we wait." I whisper.

He doesn't answer me. I feel him turn to face me, come even closer beside me. I am far too exhausted to do anything about it.

His fingers caress the side of my face, and I flinch away on instinct. I hate how familiar the touch feels on my skin.

"Sweet Jamie." he tells me, though I cannot stand to look at him as he does so, "We shall see each other again, in heaven or hell."

My breathing comes in shallow and slow waves. The sky is dark and cloudy before my very eyes.

"I should hope not." I say, feeling the ground around me weakly with my palm, "Ye're wrong, Randall. You willna haunt me any longer, ye devil."

He laughs quietly beside me, as his hand travels slowly down my neck. I tense underneath his touch.

The hatred I feel in my heart towards him is what gives me the strength to pick up my blade, and thrust it swiftly inbetween his ribs.

Reluctantly, I turn to face him. He's close to me, terrifyingly, _awfully_ close, and his lips open in a sort of perpetual gasp. I smile, knowing he hasn't expected this of me. I press the blade in further, watching as his wrinkles cover in sweat. I imagine this must be quite exhilerating for him to go through.

His lips move slowly, as though he wants to tell me something. I thrust my dirk in deeper to make sure he doesn't.

His last dying breath hits my cheek like the first morning breeze at dawn.

My hand falls to the ground beside me. I exhale, exhausted and in a great deal of pain. The sky gets darker by the moment, and the world becomes awfully silent around me. I do not have the strength to look around me, nor to push his body off mine.

The everlasting silence is nearly peaceful, almost comforting, but I am too weak to think of it as such. I exhale weakly, hoping, _no, praying_ that this was not going to be the end. Even as I lay there, trembling and bleeding out, a hope ignites deep within me.

I think, I _have_ to live. I have to life _for her._

She is my last conscious thought before my eyes close on the bloodied moor.

**Author's Note:**

> Can you tell I am utterly fascinated by Jamie Fraser's mind?
> 
> (title is from a song from the Witcher 2 game soundtrack by Krzysztof Wierzynkiewicz by the same title - a must listen, as it fits the tone of the fic perfectly!)
> 
> (Also, if you liked the fic, consider commenting! I love all comments and will love you forever if you do comment.)


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